


Sometimes Good Enough is All There Is

by SniperMoran



Series: The Early Years [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Darkness, Hospitals, I have a shitty characterization of Jim, Jim's a sweetie, Sebastian hates hospitals, Someone stop me, ahhhhhhh, hints of suicide attempt, stop the madness please, what even are these tags I'm sorry, why do I write things in the wee hours?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 13:29:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9822692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SniperMoran/pseuds/SniperMoran
Summary: Tragedy strikes at the heart of the young sniper, and he forgets that his family was not all he had in the world.Sometimes all we can ask for is just being good enough.Excerpt from 'The Beginning of Our End'Can also be a stand alone piece





	

**Author's Note:**

> Yay for shitty summaries that are written at 2am!  
> Yay for shitty drabbles written from 1am-2am!
> 
> There will be another part of this written at some point. It will just be the scenes that took place before the hospital.

The room was huge. Darkness surrounded him and the cold air pricked his skin like tiny daggers. The young man turned his head, trying to search through the darkness but it was like a blanket. There was just nothingness. He felt his brow furrow as the confusion manifested itself on his facial features. There was silence hanging almost tangibly in the air.  
He wasn't restrained in any physical sort of way, so he took hesitant steps forward, unsure of where he was even going. He shuffled his feet across the ground, just to make sure that he wouldn't trip on any unseen obstacles, and the sound of his bare feet shuffling across the floor echoed throughout--...well, he didn't even know where he was, actually. He had thought it was a giant warehouse, to begin with, but there were no windows, there were no walls.  
It was just all darkness.  
He opened his mouth to call out, but when he tried to use his voice, there was just nothing. Thinking on it, he hadn't even been able to hear his breathing. With how quiet the space was, he would have thought his breathing would have been overly obvious. Trying again resulted in the same amount of nothing. His brows furrowed further as he reached out ahead of him, trying to find something, anything.

He wasn't sure how long it was that he wandered around in this dark and silent space, there was no way to judge the movement of time. To him, it felt like days. His feet were cold and his legs were sore. His lungs were numb and he felt a weight dragging him down. Slowly, he slipped to the floor and curled up there, wrapping his arms around himself. He closed his eyes--though it wouldn't matter one way or another--and he was sure that he had drifted to some sort of sleep.

Opening his eyes again, a blinding light greeted him and he squinted, trying to raise his hand to block it out, but something kept him from doing so. He blinked a few times, trying to get a better view of where he was. When his eyes finally adjusted to the awful fluorescent lights above him, the smell of antiseptic hit him.  
Hospital.  
He fucking hated hospitals.  
Attempting to sit up yielded similar results to him trying to move his hand to block out the light. Something was wrong, something was restraining him and keeping him there. He attempted to shout, but found that his mouth felt like cotton.

"You're awake...?" came a soft voice, one that seemed altogether familiar and foreign. "Bastian, it's alright now...please just relax," the voice said calmly, and the Irish lilt to it gave him the answer of who it was before he even looked over.  
Jim.  
He let his gaze focus on those dark eyes for a moment, but he felt his eyelids getting heavy and he couldn't seem to fight it.  
"It's alright...sleep. We'll talk more when you're recovered," the small boy whispered, and Sebastian could feel small hands grasping his and squeezing lightly.  
And then darkness greeted him once more.

It went on like this for a while, the darkness and the cold greeting him. The silence surrounding him and deafening him. Then he would fall asleep on the ground and wake up in the hospital room. Jim's voice would be there, he would soothe him for a moment or two and then the young sniper was out again.

Actual days went by before he was finally conscious for longer than a few moments. He was allowed to sit up and food was brought to him on plastic plates with plastic cutlery. The nurses that delivered the food kept giving him this same look that he couldn't place and didn't have the want to understand. Instead, he would eat most of what was brought and would share the rest with Jim; who it seemed never left his side, let alone the room or the hospital in general. The smaller boy was always there, like his little guardian angel. Watching over him, fawning over him and taking care of him.  
But he still wouldn't talk about what happened. Still wouldn't tell Sebastian why he was in a damn hospital bed and wasn't allowed much movement.  
Throughout the next few days, a couple doctors would stop in and talk to him, talk to Jim. He wasn't sure of the questions they were asking, and what their relevance was, but he would answer. He had no reason to hold anything back, did he? After every session with the doctors, Jim would stand at the side of his bed and hold his hand. He would tell him stories about the stars and stories he'd read from the pages of old books until Sebastian couldn't keep his eyes open anymore.

The darkness always greeted him.  
And every-time he had to leave the darkness behind, the space around him would grow colder.

Eventually, he was released into Jim's care, and the two boys made their way back to the cottage-esque house where Sebastian lived with his family. Jim helped Sebastian get his boots off when they made it in. The older boy grumbled something along the lines of 'stop babying me, I can do it myself', but Jim just smiled and helped anyway.  
Once boots and coat were taken off and put away properly, Jim helped Sebastian to the bedroom where they sat together on the edge of Sebastian's bed, and he was finally able to ask:

"Jim...what the fuck happened?"

The smaller boy's face went pale--paler than usual, if that was possible--and he averted his gaze to his hands in his lap. It looked like he was struggling with something, and Sebastian just wanted to reach out and hold his hand.  
But he didn't.

"It's just you now, Seb..." he started, his voice small and almost far away. He still didn't look up, couldn't bring himself to look at the older boy. He knew that beautiful face and those cerulean eyes would be filled with confusion, and then something colder would hit them and he didn't want to see it. "Your...I wasn't there, so I don't know the whole story. I only...you only managed to tell me bits of what happened," he continued, pausing again, trying to put everything together before spitting it out. How could he tell his best, and only friend that his father and brother were dead, and that the younger brother he'd been tasked with caring for was...gone. Disappeared. Nowhere to be found. He didn't want a repeat of that night...

Sebastian's breath slowed, the world around him seeming to slow as well, as Jim spoke. The words rang with a truth that the young man didn't fully understand. What had happened? He was...alone? It was just him?

"Bastian, listen to me, okay," pale hands cupped Sebastian's face, turning it so that dark chocolate eyes could gaze into those that resembled the sea. "Before I tell you what happened, you need to know that none of this is your fault. I can't--I won't let you out of my sight until I'm sure that you understand this," he said, his voice stern as he looked the older boy over. He got a confused look and a nod from Sebastian in response. Leaning forward, Jim pressed their foreheads together, small arms snaking around broad shoulders. "Your father and Sylvester..they're...they're dead, Bastian. They were killed," he paused and closed his eyes, taking a breath to steady himself. He needed to be strong for Sebastian, but every word he spoke brought flashes of his best friend lying on the floor of the bathroom-- "You managed to save yourself and Cyrus but...Cyrus vanished. He ran away. Seb we tried....We tried so hard to track him down but you taught him too well and he's--he's just gone."

And just like that, the memories were flooding back. The dark room, the cold in the air. He and his family tied up. There were men there, asking things in a foreign language that Sebastian was not yet fluent in. Then gunshots and he saw his father and Sylvester slump over, and everything went red.  
The next piece he remembered was--  
"Jim..." he breathed, tears streaming down his cheeks without his knowledge or permission. "You...you found me and--I'm so fucking sorry I--" he swallowed heavily, reaching up to wrap the small frame in his arms, squeezing gently.  
He thought he'd lost everything, thought that his world had crumbled to pieces and there was nothing left but the darkness, the cold and the silence.  
But he forgot one very important detail--

"Bastian, I'm always here..." the small boy whispered, a sad smile on his lips. "I'm never going to leave your side. It's you and me until the end, okay? No matter what..." Carefully, Jim pulled himself away from Sebastian, looking up into his face, searching it for any signs of a repeat of the night nearly a week ago now. While there were tears, and there was a sadness and a confusion that were rightly placed...the darkness had left him. He knew that things would be alright, eventually. That they would be alright.  
And for now, that was just good enough.


End file.
